Lions and Amoebas oh my!

13Oct

Cat fight at the Lion Park Zoo in Addis Ababa

I apologize for not being on top of my blog. My goal I set coming into Peace Corps was to update my blog once a week. It has been almost a month now since my last post but I do have an excuse or two. Anyways, I’ll be trying to post at least bi-weekly if not weekly from now on. Since my last post I have continued trying to integrate and settle in to my new community. However, I hit a few bricks in the road. A little over a month ago I started getting really sick and come to find out I had more going on then what was determined on September 10th when I initially went to the hospital. I had parasites galore crawling around inside me as well as amoebas. I wasn’t getting better and after doing blood work, etc at the local hospital in Aman I had to make a trip into Addis to see the doctor. I was in Addis for about a week and a half as I was being treated for amoebas as well as severe migraines. I was having horrible migraines and we didn’t realize it was the medicine I was taking to prevent me from getting malaria that was causing them until after I saw an internal medicine specialist, had an MRI done on my brain (they also offered me the option of drawing fluid from my brain, that idea didn’t work out) and an eye exam. It was a joyous adventure going on my clinical tour of Addis Ababa. In the end I had to switch medicines and my head no longer feels like it is going to explode and for the time being (knock on wood) I think I have cleared my system of all parasites and amoebas. Although I didn’t feel well most of the time I was there, a perk to being in Addis during the time was joining a small group to see the Lion Park Zoo as well as doing some shopping for decorations for my house in Aman. I finally got back to my site at the beginning of this week and I ‘ve been hard at work since. 😉 Hard at work Ethiopian style. By that I mean, things move very slowly.

Mmmmmm Ferenji migib!

My IST (In-service training) is now less than a month away and I’ve been hard at work trying to do my research for my CENA (Community Education Needs Assessment) report that I have to turn in at that time as well as continuing to introduce myself to people in Aman and the surrounding area. This next week on Thursday, one of the Peace Corps program assistants for Education is coming to my site to do an installation meeting. The meeting is to let people in my community know about Peace Corps and more specifically to help them understand why I am here. So my counterpart, a local English teacher and I have been running around inviting community leaders and local education officials to next week’s meeting. I will get a chance to speak at the meeting as well but with my limited Amharic I will most likely just be doing a basic introduction and a quick speech about where I’m from, what experience I have and what I hope to gain from the people of Aman. Well, that is it for now. My future posts will include more information about the local culture, the food I eat, etc as well as an update on the work I’m doing. Thanks for reading. Oh and I got my first care package a couple days ago. For those wondering how long packages take to arrive, this one took about three weeks. Don’t forget to check out my Care Package Wish List Page. 😉

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